“I had no direction in my life whatsoever when I came here… Now I want to go back to school to become an addiction therapist, so that I can be part of other people’s recovery and a positive force in their life like the staff at Beaches was for me.”

Alcohol Is a Drug

Addiction is an extremely cunning disease. Many people don’t fully understand how powerful it actually is. When people are struggling with an addiction to drugs like prescription medications, heroin, meth or cocaine, they may believe that drinking is still alright. It’s important to understand that alcohol is a drug.

One of the arguments is that alcohol is legal, but this doesn’t mean that it’s not addictive. Thousands of people struggle with an addiction to alcohol each year. Many of these people would have the same problem if they were to pick up a different drug. First, a person must understand addiction in order to fully understand why alcohol can be dangerous for anyone addicted to other drugs.

Alcohol is a Drug when it Comes to Addiction

The disease of addiction centers in a person’s brain, and the brain doesn’t distinguish the between substances a person is using. The primary issue a person suffers from when they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol is they have an excess flow of dopamine that isn’t properly moderated, so that person can become addicted to just about anything. The different types of 12-step programs are clear proof that addiction can show it’s face in many different ways. Some of the 12-step programs out there include:

Alcoholics Anonymous

Narcotics Anonymous

Gamblers Anonymous

Overeaters Anonymous

Sex Addicts Anonymous.

At the end of the day, anyone struggling with an addiction suffers from the same problem in the brain regardless of their addiction. The Basic Text in Narcotics Anonymous discusses how alcohol is a drug and many people with a drug addiction have relapsed by mistaking alcohol for a non-drug, non-addictive substance. Anyone trying to recover from an addiction needs to realize that they must be careful with anything that can become addictive.

Not Understanding Alcohol is a Drug Causes Relapses

No matter what your drug of choice is, it’s of the utmost importance to understand that alcohol is a drug. Many people who were once addicted to heroin, prescription medications, meth or cocaine find that once they quit drugs, alcohol brought them back to the same place–an unmanageable life. The justification many people use is that they never had a problem with alcohol before so they should be able to drink now that they’ve quit drugs. One of the reasons people never previously saw a problem with drinking was because they were already getting their high from the drugs. Thinking of alcohol as different than other drugs can be a potentially fatal mistake.

Getting Help for Addiction at Beaches Recovery

Whether you’ve developed a drug addiction or are beginning to show the symptoms of alcoholism, Beaches Recovery is here to help. At our program, we teach our clients more about the disease of addiction and how it affects the brain. We want you to have a thorough understanding that anyone with an addicted mind can switch from one addiction to another. Through different types of treatment, people find that the alcohol or the drugs were only a symptom of the problem, and many people are just trying to fill a void that they may or may not have realized was there.

The solution Beaches Recovery provides is how to fill that void in a much healthier way. At our JCAHO accredited Jacksonville drug rehab facility, we teach clients how to live a better life free of active addiction from drugs as well as alcohol. We also work with some of the top insurance providers like Aetna, BCBS and United. Our addiction specialist are ready to help you out of your addiction right now. Dial 866-605-0532.